Spin the wheel and twist the thread.
Is it more useful now?
Or is it still stuck
On a wheel going nowhere?
Like a tire in the snow.
And everyone tells you
Revving the engine
Won’t get you anywhere
But overheated.

Jacqueline dipped her toes into the water. It was warm, just shy of truly hot. The kind of warm that invites you in and can hold you there for hours. The hot spring released long ribbons of steam into the winter air, which were easily lost against the white banks of snow behind it. Jacqueline slipped into the water.

The spa was crowded. It was the high season for such things, and everyone was eager for the naturally occurring bath. She looked around, recognizing almost everyone: their name, their rank, their family relations. No such thing as anonymity here. Absolutely everyone she knew came to this spa absolutely every year. If the water wasn’t so nice, the whole thing would be a bore.

Jacqueline brushed a stray silver hair from her eyes and waited. And it didn’t take long for her to be found.

“Oh my God, for a minute I thought you weren’t coming,” Barbara greeted her, gliding through the water, “How’ve you been, kiddo?”

“Fine,” Jacqueline shrugged.

“Really? You’re fine? You’re sure? I would’ve been a mess after a humiliation like that – sorry, a tragedy – it’s a tragedy, Jackie, really. But you were always so…demure. No wonder you’re holding up so well. Oh, here, sweetheart, let me get that,” Barbara reached up and plucked a louse from Jacqueline’s hair. She tossed the bug into her mouth with bath-wrinkled fingers.

“But really, you’re fine?” she asked as she chewed.

“It’s not so bad,” Jacqueline said, allowing Barbara to continue picking through her hair, “I mean, we had a decent run, I suppose…And I always knew it wouldn’t last.”

“That’s really big of you, Jackie, I mean it.”

Jacqueline mulled it over, picking up a pebble with her toes and letting it fall back slowly through the water.

“Do you think it’s the hair above my lip?” she asked, “I’ve always been kind of self-conscious about it. Not that there’s a lot of it or anything, it’s just…it’s something you might notice, y’know?”

“There’s nothing wrong with your lip, believe me, it isn’t you. He’s just an animal – all impulse, no commitment. Like you said, you knew it wouldn’t last.”

“Oh God!” Jacqueline slipped out of Barbara’s hands and into the water until it was up to her nose.

“What?”

“There he is!” Jacqueline pointed to the far edge of the pool. Through the throng of other bathers, adolescents, and infants clinging to mothers’ backs, strode in Shep, the alpha-male. All others yielded from his path.

“Yes – the little tart. Have you heard about her? She’s taken to calling herself Hélène – who does she think she is – as if nobody knows her name is Helen,” Barbara scoffed, “Just because she’s got Shep’s favor for now, you’d think the was queen of the universe or something, the way she struts around like that.”

“He’s with Helen?”

“Oh, God, sorry sweetheart. You didn’t know?”

Jacqueline dunked her head beneath the water. Barbara pulled her up.

“What should I do? What should I do?” Jacqueline panicked, “Should I bare my teeth? Huh? Should I throw my–”

“No, no, no – that’s beneath you. You know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna get you all nice and groomed, and you’re gonna have a nice soak, and by the time we go back up the mountain you’re gonna feel fine – brand new.”

“You mean it?” Jacqueline asked, wringing her tiny hands together.

“Absolutely.”

“You’re the best…Oh, here,” she plucked a tick from Barbara’s neck. She even allowed herself the hint of a smile as she made a snack of the bug. Jacqueline turned her back, letting Barbara groom her coat of silver hair. She pushed away all thoughts of Shep as far as she could, concentrating instead on the long pink faces bobbing aimlessly through the warmth of the water.

The naked bulbs around the mirror flickered. Power was never quite reliable. It came and went as it pleased. Grease paint, on the other hand, was far too loyal. A thin residue of last night’s show was still lingering as today’s face was painted on. Thick white, thick red, maybe a little blue or green. Plus a nose you couldn’t breath through. The light flickered again. Maybe someone’s walking on the cord.

The mirror’s gotten cloudy over the years. Unwashable blooms like cataracts had developed beneath the glass. At least it’s only around the edges. Charlie opened up the jars of paint, releasing their familiar smell. Then stopped.

Who on earth is that, that man inside mirror? He’s old. The slightest folds around his mouth had entrenched, cutting deep into the flesh. His cheeks, withered. His teeth, yellow. The lower rims of his eyes were slack and pink. Charlie looked the mirror in the eye. I’ve become a stranger.

Ten, twenty, thirty years had caught up in an instant. The young man in borrowed trousers was nowhere to be seen. The young man with cardboard suitcase and the wildest dreams – that! That man is me. But where did he go? This man is old and tired.

Charlie stretched his skin taut across the bone, but that wasn’t any better. His youth had disappeared inside this tougher skin, made tough by time a lifetime on the rails. Perhaps only a fool is a fool for this long. Silliness and slapsticks belong surely to the young. The younger. The better limbered and more relevant. Not this aging stranger.

Charlie scooped a glob of grease paint from the jar. No use thinking of it now, this old man had a job to do. Ridiculous old man. Has and been with nothing left to…Charlie met his eye again, his face half painted white and red. And cracked a smile.

Ah yes, there I am.

Fully painted, the stranger became again the laughing youth. Charlie donned his topless top hat and pinned a cotton flower to his breast. The lights flickered and he was out the door, giggling as he went.

“I don’t wanna sing anymore, I don’t wanna tour, I don’t wanna get on anotha’ stage again for the rest a my life. I’m through.”

“Aw, c’mon Lorraine, you don’t mean that.”

“The whole dream ’s broke down.” The words barely made it out before her voice clammed up entirely. Her face went flush in an unbearable heat under the cake of yesterday’s makeup. It was too much, and too cruel. Lorraine ran the edge of her hand under her eye to catch the damp.

“Hey, hey now,” Blanche cooed, setting hands upon her shoulders, “It’s not that bad. Look, you’re just tired and this tour ‘s been shit anyway. But you love singin’, you don’t really wanna quit that do ya?”

Lorraine looked away into the distance, willing dryer eyes.

“I tell ya what, soon as we get to Kansas City, you an’ me ditch this gig and go see my buddy at the Savoy – give it one last shot someplace decent, ok?”

Lorraine’s breath went heavy in her chest. She would’ve allowed herself to fall if Blanche’s hands weren’t still clinging to her shoulders. It was so much. The ashes of her career felt insurmountable. It would be easier to forget it entirely, pretend it never happened – to shut down that part of herself and replace it with something stable and numb. But then…she slowly nodded her head.

“Good,” Blanche said with more relief than joy, “Now why don’t we go sit down again, huh? Take it easy this mornin’.”

Lorraine sucked in her tears and wandered back toward the gaping door of the bus. Once more. On the distant edge of the road, she saw a pair of figures – Al the driver was returning with a mechanic.

“No, I don’t blame you, Harry,” Nadine rest her head down on the counter, “But I think you could’a told me sooner.”

“I know honey, and I’m sorry.” He flicked a lamp on, partially filling the room with weak yellow light. Nadine’s slender fingers drew perspiration down from her glass to trace shapes upon the lamination. The veins on her hand stuck out more than they used to.

“Does Bernice know?” she asked.

“Not yet. I thought I’d tell ‘er in the morning. Or maybe wait until she comes home next weekend.”

“You’ll call her in the morning.”

“I’ll call her in the morning,” Harry agreed. He opened a window, hoping for the cool night air. How long had he been promising to fix the screech that it made?

“And you tell that child everything.”

“Of course, honey, everything.”

“God, what luck we have.”

Harry walked over and laid his hands on Nadine’s slender shoulders. The starched cotton dress stood away from her body. It was just enough to let his hands slip under as he tried to ease the muscle.

She sat up. Her thumb idly twisting the wedding ring around her finger.

“So you got a plan or somethin’?”

“Workin’ on it. Frank said they might got somethin’ for me uptown – but too early to say.”

I maintain that I am not a good man. No, that’s not quite true. Good perhaps, but certainly not the best. I have my doubts about myself. About life. About the future and it’s meaning for me. But so does everyone, I suppose. Especially here.

No, I don’t think they envisioned this sort of existential crisis when they first started building the Hope. What a pretentious goddamn name. I wonder what little prick in the marketing division came up with that gem. Hope. A better name would have been Ambition. That’s what this is, after all. A great ambition in the form of a behemoth vessel with colonial intent, hurling itself toward a distant star. And here we are, somewhere in the middle, just waiting to arrive.

Or waiting to die. It’s true. Our destination, a lonely rock in Sector 419, is exactly three human lifespans from Earth. Three generations. The first takes off, the third lands, and we? We only wait.

And so men like me, the mostly good on our mostly good days, we have a drink. There is a particular bar for men like me. An unassuming room at end of a corridor on the third deck of the fourth zone. It is a nothing spot, but it is everything. Absolutely everything to men like me.

And sure. Sure, there are other bars of higher standing, finer drinks, and better crowds. There are other bars to be seen in and noticed. But that’s not why we come here, to the minor tap far out of the way. We come here for the bartender. We come here for Miranda.

“Hi’ya toots,” I say, taking my usual seat.

“Who let you in here?” Miranda teases. But only by half.

She is not a beautiful woman. Her shoulders are too rounded and too hunched. She has the same sad-puppy face of Eleanor Roosevelt. But she is the most beautiful woman. Though no one can ever quite figure out why.

“Miranda, darling, run away with me.”

“Yeah? And go where?” she says with a huff, pouring my drink without needing to ask.

“I hear there are some lovely little condos down in the fifth zone. Deck four. Very discreet.”

“More than that. We’re on a mission we didn’t start and won’t live long enough finish. No choice and no glory….and of course the kiddos will do great things, but what are we doing? We, the interim?” I say, slipping into lower feelings, “A whole generation marooned by the decisions of its forebears.”

Chairs shuffle down the bar. The clink of glasses. A dozen conversations rimmed with laughter. And I sit staring into the deep-end of my glass.

“Joseph, look at me,” she says. I look at her.

“Has there ever been a time when that wasn’t the case?”

I think through my warm and troubled fog. Reluctantly, I answer.

“I suppose not.”

“Mmm. So quit your whining.”

I can’t help but laugh. Miranda the mother-Valkyrie, always ready to provide a swift kick in the ass.

“You want to know what the interim generation is doing?” she says, “Surviving. Living. Doing everything it can so that future you envy so badly can exist.”